Making your own mold shape...can it be done?

**dudelsack** · 27 November 2013, 03:31 PM

Good evening,
Thanks for reading this.

I wish to know if it is possible to design your own mold form in Xara. Following senario.

I do a lot of design for engraving and most of the items are odd shapes that I wish to fill with design. I wish to engrave a name in block letters on a heart shaped locket. I wish for the name itself, to be in the form of the heart. I know I can put a mold on the name and play with the handles to sort of get it close to a heart shape, but it occurred to me that it would be real nice to simply drop a photo of the item into the file, do a nice outline of the item with the pen tool or shape tool and after getting a real good outline...to just make that shape into a mold I could save and use to apply to most anything I wish to mold into a heart shaped form. Is there a way to make a shape outline...any unfilled shape.... into a "mold" and not have to play with the preset mold shapes that are found in the mold tool? Any way to save it once you went to the trouble of making it?
I hope I explained this correctly enough for one of you to understand what I am asking. I had hoped there would simply be a right click on the shape and a menu button saying "use as mold" or such. Another menu choice with "save as mold"...that would put the icing on the cake... Thanks!

**dudelsack** · 27 November 2013, 03:34 PM

SORRY!!! Someone put this into the correct forum....please! Thanks! :-)

**gwpriester** · 27 November 2013, 03:58 PM

Moved.

Tony Roberts created two sets of custom molds many years ago http://www.xaraxone.com/html/tony_roberts_molds.html

To be honest I think he just created these by editing the existing envelopes.

**angelize** · 27 November 2013, 05:31 PM

That's how I would do it. Start with a solid coloured rectangle and apply a default envelope. Manipulate the four corner nodes to create your custom shape. This moulded shape can be saved as a .xar document for future use. To use your new mold with the molded shape open and selected simply click the copy mold button on the info bar and then you can use the paste envelope button to apply the mold to any object on the page or even on another page.

Note: in order to use your mold for a perspective mold it must have 4 straight sides.

**tonylondon** · 28 November 2013, 07:46 PM

Originally Posted by gwpriester

Tony Roberts created two sets of custom molds many years ago http://www.xaraxone.com/html/tony_roberts_molds.html

To be honest I think he just created these by editing the existing envelopes.

Gary you have a great memory. I saved the basic rectangular mould envelope and duplicated it for each shape. Each time, I snapped it to a grid and manipulated the handles. As you'll be aware, the serious limitation is that there are only four points to play with.